Jennifer Lawrence truly went off the radar for a little while, got married, and had a baby. But now she’s easing her way back into the movie-making and celebrity world. She has a new movie coming out, No Hard Feelings, that seems like lowkey spon-con for….wait for it…Buick. Yeah, the old-school luxury imprint for General Motors. This is their marketing strategy, sponsoring a movie where a 32-year-old played by Jennifer Lawrence agrees to date a 19 year old wallflower in exchange for…a used Buick Regal. Is Buick trying to appeal to a younger, hipper consumer by making their car a major plot point in a raunchy R-rated comedy? Lord, beer me strength.

I went off on a tangent there but it is an exceptionally silly corporate gambit that I believe deserves to be made fun of. I think the people making the film were happy to have any help they could get. It’s hard to get original features financed these days. While promoting the Buick Movie, she said something in an interview for Variety that surprised me: she says she’d happily play Katniss Everdeen again–the Hunger Games character that made her a star. I never really got the vibe that she’d be down to return to that world.

Jennifer Lawrence is ready to play the girl on fire again.

The Oscar winner says she is open to returning to the “Hunger Games” franchise after she became a household name for her work as Katniss in the four movies.

“Oh, my God – totally!” Lawrence told me Friday morning during a Zoom video interview while promoting her new R-rated coming-of-age comedy, “No Hard Feelings.” “If Katniss ever could ever come back into my life, 100 percent.”

Looking off camera, she added, “My producing partner just clutched her heart.”

The four “Hunger Games” installments starred Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson. The first, released in 2012, was directed by Gary Ross with the following three helmed by Francis Lawrence.

An upcoming prequel movie, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” stars Viola Davis, Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman and Hunter Schafer. The film chronicles Coriolanus Snow’s rise to power to become President of Panem. It is set for release Nov. 17.

[From Variety]

I remember seeing the first Hunger Games movie in college and I won’t lie, I found Jennifer’s performance in it quite moving. It’s probably because I identify with Katniss, the protective older sister. But I think the source material isn’t that good. The fourth book sort of ruined the whole thing for me. I’m sure Jennifer would be great as an older Katniss, maybe just coming to terms with the extraordinary trauma that the character faced as a child. But I cannot stress enough how tired I am of sequels and prequels. And honestly I think Jennifer deserves better. She has been in some questionable projects (remember Passengers?) but when she’s given the right material, she does great work. Everybody deserves better in Hollywood, frankly. Viola Davis, who is a queen and who elevates every single project she appears in, deserves better than a Hunger Games prequel, I’ll just say it. I think audiences are getting tired of nothing but franchises and kids’ films at the multiplex. There’s a sea change ahead, I hope. Streaming isn’t working as a business model, nobody’s going to the movies as often as they did five or ten years ago, and even Marvel movies aren’t always the surest bets…I don’t think Hollywood has been this destabilized since the collapse of the old studio system in the 1950s. Maybe something good will come out of it.

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Photos credit: Olivier Huitel/Avalon, T. Jackson/Backgrid and Getty